Mind Game (44 page)

She slicked her hair back and braided it a second time as tightly as possible. As she slipped her hands into the thin gloves she glanced at Nicolas. “Well? If you’re coming, you’d better get ready.”

“We’ve been ready. Our gear is already in the cars. Do you want a radio?”

She shook her head. “Too distracting. I have to rely on myself, Nicolas. I can’t change how I do things at this late date. When I go in, I have to believe in myself, not think if something happens you can rescue me. I don’t need rescuing. If I’m in trouble, I’ll get myself out.” She pinned him with her black gaze. “Is that understood?”

“Perfectly clear.” He caught up her equipment bag and carried it out of the room.

Dahlia started after him and then went back to look at the photographs scattered across the bed. She picked up one and stared down at it, at the man who had orchestrated the murder of her family. It took a few moments before she realized the temperature in the room was climbing fast and her fingers were burning black holes in the evidence she would need to show the director. She tossed the picture away from her, but sat down on the bed to look at the others. Nearly all of them were taken in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Why did Louise have the pictures?

“Dahlia?” Max stood in the doorway, his piercing blue eyes watching her.

She lifted her chin, drawing in air to calm herself. It was sheer hell being around so many people and trying to guard her emotions. She couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for them to be around her. “What is it, Max?”

“I wanted to say I was sorry. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it must have been like for you and you’re right, I should have told you I knew Dr. Whitney. You know all the problems with the experiment, everything that we suffer using the abilities we have and how difficult it is to block out the people around us. You probably know more than we do.” He tapped his finger on the door. “The thing is, we were warned someone was trying to kill us all. That someone knew about us and had already been killing others like us.” He jerked his chin toward the outer room where the laughter and easy camaraderie of the GhostWalkers could be heard. “Someone definitely killed members of their team, and we didn’t want to be next. We all went deep undercover and buried the information on us through as many layers of red flags as we could. Admiral Henderson helped us out.”

“And you didn’t think that I was in danger?”

“We should have, Dahlia. We should have taken steps to protect you as well.”

She knew she shouldn’t ask. She already knew the answer, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Why didn’t you?”

Max looked down at his hands, closed them into two tight fists before looking her straight in the eye. “We trained together and trusted one another. You were an unknown.

You have powers and complications none of us had, and we didn’t know if we could trust you not to turn on us.”

“You still don’t know that, Max.” It was a knife, she decided. He’d taken a knife and just plunged it through her heart. She wished she could be cold and distant and not feel anything. Hurt was just as dangerous as anger. Getting near people was hazardous and perhaps even perilous for someone like her.

“I do know, Dahlia, and I should have known it months ago. Jesse should have known it. We were wrong. I know that doesn’t help with the way you’re feeling, but I wanted to say it. To at least let you know how I felt.”

She didn’t know whether to thank him or spit in his face. She could only stand there helplessly wondering if it was possible to have a silent meltdown.

“I hope that confession made you feel better, Maxwell,” Nicolas said. His tone was low and mean and sent a shiver down Dahlia’s spine. “No, you didn’t call her a freak or different, but you damn well made her feel that way, didn’t you? And all for what? This little speech was all about making you feel better, not Dahlia. Now you can go home and tell yourself you apologized, and that should make it all right.”

Dahlia turned away from the two men. The air crackled with electricity, the energy suddenly alive and breathing like a monster while the two men faced each other with ice-cold eyes and anger fed by the violence of the gathering storm both inside the house and out.

She pushed past both men, afraid of the flames dancing behind her eyes. Afraid of the anger she felt at Max and Jesse and the admiral. She had spent most of her life learning control, but when surrounded by so many people with such strong emotions, it seemed an impossible task. She nearly ran into Kaden. He caught her shoulders to steady her, and at once, some of the pressure eased.

“Just breathe, Dahlia. Stand outside if you have to. That’s what we do when the overload hits us. You have every right to remove yourself from the situation. Just because you’re in a house with people doesn’t mean you can’t have privacy.”

He walked with her to the door and opened it, allowing the night air inside. “Lily is an incredible woman. She was raised with every luxury and she knows which fork to use at a dinner party and who’s who in the world of high finance. She can mingle with the president and not bat an eyelash. In fact, she has, but she walks out when she needs to walk out. It’s one of the first rules she taught us about being in a crowd or a social situation. You just look mysterious and intriguing.”

Dahlia laughed. “I’d really look mysterious and intriguing if I started the White House on fire. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be doing much mingling in that direction.”

He grinned at her. “Can you imagine the Secret Service hunting for the firestarter, and you’re sitting at the table with the president, looking innocent?”

“Thanks, Kaden.” She looked into the night. The clouds boiled and churned, darkening the sky even more. The wind whistled between the buildings and bent the trees and bushes nearly double. “Look at this. When did this storm front move in? I checked the weather earlier and they said
possibility
of a storm. I don’t think the weather people ever get it right. Do you think anything else can go wrong tonight?”

Kaden turned to look at Nicolas coming up behind her and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’d say all kinds of things could go wrong.”

Dahlia knew Nicolas was there by the strange reaction of her body, the way it came to life. The way the energy dissipated. By the stillness in Kaden. She refused to turn around, staring out into the night instead. “You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

“No, but I wanted to,” he replied honestly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t help the situation any by getting angry, did I?”

“No, but part of me was glad you said it.”

Nicolas wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “The weather is looking a little grim. Maybe we should postpone this until the storm passes.”

“No, the storm might help. I want this over with.”

“All right, we’ll set up then. You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dahlia inhaled the night. She always felt safe in the cover of darkness. Her body was already humming, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, and her brain was on overdrive. This was what she loved, utilizing the unusual talents she had. It was what always saved her, what always kept pain and heartache at bay. She could walk through the empty streets and look at the homes and imagine she was part of a community. She could walk along the sidewalks and stare into store windows and pretend she was shopping with friends. She could almost be normal in the dark of night.

High above the streets, she shot out a cable to hook on the rooftop of the Lombard building. She tested the line to make certain the hook was secure and then anchored it. All the while she watched the building and moved from angle to angle to get a feel for the rhythm and movement taking place in the offices on each floor and on the roof.

A guard with a dog walked the ground-floor corridors. The building was dark above the third floor. It looked empty and inviting, but her senses told her it wasn’t so. The vault was in the center of the building. Not the basement as one would think, but where all the researchers could have easy access. The building was built like a hive, with the vault as the center hub of activity. It was an enormous room with security cameras and panels for retinal scans, fingerprints, and access codes. She had watched two of the men insert keys into the locks and turn them simultaneously to gain entrance into the vault. Everything from data to prototypes was locked up in the vault when the researchers went home. It was the perfect place to hide stolen data. Who would ever know the difference?

Lombard Inc. had a good thing going. They stole ideas, hid them in a vault where no one would look, and after a few weeks or months, pulled the ideas back out of storage, modified them slightly, and put them into production under their own label. It was an amazingly effective, lucrative scheme. And now they’d decided to line their pockets even further by developing classified weapons and selling them to any government or terrorist group willing to pay an exorbitant price.

Dahlia turned her attention back to the problem of getting to the rooftop without being detected. The wind was particularly vicious, one of the greatest hazards of using a cable to cross between high buildings. She studied the angles of the roof with an expert eye. When cable running, she started out firmly on the cord, but most of the time, she did levitate just above it, and it took tremendous concentration on her part to generate forward momentum while levitating. It was actually faster to run, but not quite as safe. The steady drizzle wouldn’t help, making the cable slick, so she decided to do a combination of both.

Dahlia leapt out onto the cable, and began to run, nearly levitating as she raced across the long stretch between the two buildings. The wind blew in fierce gusts, almost as if it were taking deliberate aim and blowing straight at her to knock her off the cable. It caught her sideways a couple of times, nearly taking her off the thin line strung between the two rooftops. She never looked down, never took her eyes or her mind off her destination. She could control the sag in the cable and even the sway to some extent, but it was impossible to control the wind. A particularly strong gust caught her from the side, slamming into her hard enough to throw her off the cable.

Startled, she fell, flinging out her gloved hand to catch the braided steel as she toppled. Her fist closed around it, nearly yanking her arm out of her socket. She could hear Nicolas’s gasp of horror echo in her mind, but he shut off his thoughts to allow her complete concentration. She caught the cable with both hands and dangled several stories above ground waiting for the wind to die down. With few structures to impede it, the wind could be ferocious.

Using her gymnastic and high-wire skills, Dahlia swung her legs up and over the cable until she was hanging by her knees. Drops of rain splashed over her neck and ran down her face. Dahlia reached through her legs and pulled herself into a sitting position. Below her, the streetlights looked a hazy yellow through the dreary mist. She stared down at the strange-colored halo of light to orient herself when she saw the shadow move out of the alcove of a doorway. Recognition was immediate.

There had always seemed a furtiveness about the way he had moved. Roman Howard, Martin’s brother, had been the man at Rutgers University, just outside Dr. Ellington’s office. He had walked by casually, just like any other student, but she had noticed him because he caused every instinct to flare into self-preservation mode. He had been hunting that day, already staking out the professor and marking him for the kill. Dahlia had been just another student herself, and he hadn’t noticed her blending in as she always was able to do, a chameleon when necessary.

High above him, with the wind and rain in her face, she watched him cross the street to the Lombard building and stand in front of the entrance, looking around him guardedly, as if he suspected someone was watching him. This was the man who had killed her family, destroyed her home, and nearly killed Jesse Calhoun. He betrayed his country and his own family, using his relationship with the woman who raised him as her own son and his brother, to further his own ends.

Dahlia watched as Roman Howard walked back down the sidewalk, using the building’s reflective glass to try to search for hidden eyes. He was clearly uneasy, but he eventually went back to the entrance and punched in a code. How would he have one, and why? He was supposed to be a student, self-employed. Lily’s investigator had found no evidence of him working for Lombard. They were a large firm and often received government contracts. Many of their research and development teams had security clearance. There had been no mention of Roman Howard having such a clearance.

It was only when Dahlia felt the precarious sway of the cable and heard the sizzle of the rain that she realized the temperature around her was going up in direct proportion to the anger building inside of her. She took a deep breath and let it out. She had to keep things cool and under control. The recovery of the data on the stealth torpedo was of utmost importance. It had to come first, before anything else. She didn’t dare release more energy to the atmosphere when she was up on a cable.

She put first one, then a second foot on the thin cord and went into a crouch. Her mind immediately countered every problem the way it would in a chess match, finding points of balance in the gusting wind, finding the best angle for her body to prevent another incident. It was a fight with the distraction of wind and rain, but she kept the cable taut, using her mind. She was more cautious this time, feeling the way with her mind as she began to move forward. The wind kept the line swaying continually, so Dahlia had to counteract with her own brand of persuasion, using her psychic ability to hold the braided cord still. She picked up speed, but not enough impetus to propel her onward as she levitated. She had to actually push off the cable with her foot to keep forward momentum going.

It should have been nerve-wracking, and probably was to the GhostWalkers, but Dahlia reveled in the difficulties. Her mind and the extraordinary amounts of energy gathering in her body needed the constant challenges. She made it to the roof of the Lombard building and stood for a moment, regulating her pounding heart and controlling her breathing as the adrenaline flooded her body. She was used to that as well, the aftermath of the incredible feats she performed and the rush she got when she realized she was still alive.